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Jin abandonment of Zhongdu and southward move

Type Event Region North China Time 1213–1214

After Mongol armies besieged Jin's Zhongdu in winter 1213, Emperor Xuanzong sued for peace in March 1214 and in May moved the capital south to Nanjin…

Timeline

  1. 1213–1214Jin Zhongdu · BeijingThree Mongol armies converged before Zhongdu, with only eleven cities left unconquered in Hebei. Xuanzong sent Chancellor Wanyan Fuxing and others to pay tribute and sue for peace, offering Princess Qiguo, boys and girls, gold, silk, and horses; the Mongol army temporarily withdrew to Juyong Pass.
  2. 1214Jin Zhongdu · BeijingDespite remonstrations from ministers and imperial students, Xuanzong argued Zhongdu was too close to the Mongols to hold long, issuing the edict on the eleventh day of the fifth month and hastily departing with the six palaces on the eighteenth, traveling south via Zhuozhou and Yizhou to Nanjing (modern Kaifeng), leaving Wanyan Fuxing and Monian Jinzhong to assist the crown prince in holding Zhongdu.
  3. 1214Nanjing Kaifeng Prefecture · HenanEmperor Xuanzong arrived at Nanjing Kaifeng Prefecture, formally establishing the new capital. The move severely shook northern morale; in the seventh month Genghis Khan used the broken promise of the move as pretext to invade south again, and Zhongdu fell the following year.

Sources